Day #1: November 28, 2017

For the past week, they’ve been erecting construction barriers, marking trees, assembling equipment, but today was the first day that significant work happened.

First step, I guess, is tree removal and it was rather horrible to see so many 150′ foot high trees lying toppled over on their sides.

It’s hard to see from this photo, but the diameter of some of these trunks has to be almost two feet. I’d love to go count the rings — some of these trees must be nearly one hundred years old. Imagine that! They might have started growing while World War I was raging in Europe. Woodrow Wilson would have been president. And women still didn’t have the right to vote.

According to the paperwork the developer filed with the Town of Ossining Planning Board in 2016, there are a plethora of Norway Spruces here and those are mostly what seem to be on the ground right now. Here’s what they looked like in their glory:

There are also maples of all sorts, oaks, pine, hickory and poplars. Some will be saved for landscaping purposes it seems, but this cool, wooded area is about to get an injection of sunlight.

I also noticed that late today they set up some traffic measuring cables by the site. I wonder what they’re measuring now? The traffic data report was already submitted during the planning process. So interesting!